Who Are The People Making TV Shows Available For Illegal Download And Why Do They Do It?

I don’t encourage illegal downloading of television shows, but I understand the reality of it. Despite the growing technologies, DVRs, and access to television shows on Hulu and Netflix, downloading television not only allows for more convenient viewing (no commercials on any device), but it’s necessary for people who want to participate in the culture of a television show but either can’t afford it or refuse to pony up the cash for cable plus premium channels. My cable bill is higher than my electricity bill, and there are plenty of people who can’t afford both. Should they excluded from participation? On the other hand, it is illegal, and by not paying for it, you’re doing a disservice to the very shows that you love the most.

In theory, I am firmly against illegal downloading; in practice, if you’re already paying $120 for cable, shouldn’t you be able to download a show and watch it commercial free on your goddamn IPad while you’re on a cross-country flight without having to pay for it again on iTunes? What if you really need a screenshot for that recap you’re writing, which is meant to encourage more viewership?

But this is not about that debate. It’s about the people who make those shows available. Like the folks who make GIFs (with the exception of the brilliant Chet Manley), they are a nameless, faceless entity who are afforded little credit and no appreciation. Why do they do it? How do they do it? Who are they? Is it worth risking their ass? I’ve always wondered this.

Over on Torrentfreak, they caught up with a guy who goes by the name ANoN, who is the founder of a TV Release group, PERCEPTiON, that releases hundreds of television shows to places like The Pirates Bay. If you download from a P2P network, it’s likely that you’ve downloaded one of his uploads. So why do they engage in a time-consuming activity for no money or no credit? Why does he do it? Simply because it “provides us with a way to share quality TV releases with people around the world.” Fair enough.

“A typical day in our lives is centered around chatting about what is being aired tonight and who should record it. I personally prefer to start recording ten minutes before a show is announced. This recording is done with a HDTV tuner/recorder from a terrestrial broadcast,” ANoN explains.

“After recording it’s time to remove commercials. Using some software we remove the commercials from the recording so we have a clean episode/show. This one is called ‘original’ or ‘master’ and if it’s bugged (drops or any fail) any rip from this original will be flawed too.

“After checking comes the compression. We are a P2P group but we keep x264 Scene rules for encoding (PDTV, HDTV and 720p HDTV). Compressing on x264 takes a long time even if it’s done on a good workstation. Speed to releasing is not our priority though, quality comes first.

“After compressing it’s time to create the directory for the release, name it, and add an .nfo file with information about the release. A lot of groups use automated scripts to do this packing process, we prefer to do it manually to avoid any fail. At this point the next thing is to move the release to a secure location from where to seed it. After all this we upload the torrent on various public torrent sites.”

That sounds like a very odd “typical day,” but clearly these people do it out of a love and passion for television and a desire to spread that appreciation around.

Is he afraid of getting caught? Apparently, guys like ANoN use some precautions (they don’t use their personal computers, for instance) but he won’t divulge any more details. The important thing, he notes, is not to make money off of it, because it’s both not in the spirit of sharing, and because it makes it more dangerous (from a legal standpoint, really, this is not true: There are no degrees of illegality. If he was making thousands of dollars off of this it’d be just as illegal as downloading Spongebob Squarepants episodes for kids with cancer).

ANoN is not worried about the future of torrenting, either.

“Users are always downloading and no one can stop it. This is how the Internet works. So one way or another every time that anything related with downloading on Internet is shut down the effect is that there will be another five different systems to download. People will not stop downloading and making it forbidden is not the way.”

It’s undoubtedly true, and until consumers are offered the ability to watch the shows we want to watch at reasonable price on the device we want to watch it on, torrenting will undoubtedly continue, to the detriment, unfortunately, of the very shows we want to support the most.

Most of what’s available out there doesn’t come from P2P groups – it comes from people in “The Scene” and is leaked down to the level of bittorrent. The motivation at the scene level can be boiled down to this – the more content you upload, the more credit you get to download from scene sites. So if you specialize in TV and keep uploading a lot of that, you can download movies or apps or whatever else you need. Generally scene sites tend to have affiliates from a distributor for each of the major piracy components (movies, tv, apps). Lookup [en.wikipedia.org] and Topsite to get a better idea. Whatever you do, don’t watch that bullshit series called “The Scene.”

It’s been a while since I had friends on the inside of the piracy “scene”, but for the most part whenever someone releases a thing (music, movie, TV show, etc) they get credit on a place to download things in some ratio that’s pretty huge compared to what they’re uploading. Usually these sites happen to have all manner of content including porn. So in essence, there are plenty of people who will rip off tv shows and movies in order to download all the high quality porn they want.

You missed a few vitally important facts about torrenting. First of something that a lot of people seem to be forgetting. Namely people from other countries. It’s easy for you guys to say why not just watch it on TV because you don’t have to wait for months sometimes even an year for a show to be aired. And when it’s aired it’s usually with a horrible dub. That’s the reality for people outside the USA and one of the main reason why torrenting is so important for us

Secondly why should it be illegal and how are we hurting out shows? Seriously how? I can understand if you are talking about HBO shows where we actually have to pay to watch but for quite a few shows it makes utterly no difference. Unless you are a Nielsen family(or the equivalent in your country) it doesn’t matter if you download it or just watch it on TV. It doesn’t make any difference whatsoever and if anything you help by being able to spread more buzz online
Also the matter of legality again. Unless you are making money of it(and yes that makes quite a bit of a difference ina lot of countries) why should it be illegal to download? Seriously what’s the difference between taping the show on your video(or DVR today I am not sure how these things work so I can’t write about them) or if you just download them? It makes no sense for me that video recorders should be legal but downloading shouldn’t be.

So yeah this basically. If you are talking about movies or HBO shows as I said it’s a whole other game but when it comes to TV shows that are freely available on TV there is absolutely no logical argument on why we shouldn’t torrent them

Just as a side note, I’m pretty sure that when VCR’s first came out there was a real push from the TV industry to NOT have a way to record with them for the same exact reasons that they are upset about recording now. You can see how well they did with all that…

TV shows that are “freely available” are “freely available” because advertisers pay for them to be. These torrents strip out the advertisements. Is it really taht hard to understand? Do you honestly think people make these multi-million dollar shows just for fun? That money comes from SOMEWHERE. For HBO shows, it comes from subscribers (and DVD sales). For cable tv, it comes from both subscribers and advertising, and for broadcast TV it is almost solely advertising.

You could asy that the advertising model is dead, and that’s all well and good, but again, the product has to be paid for somehow. Right now, profits probably aren’t being hurt by downloaders just because of how few of them there are ( relatively to the vast watching public) but if everyone just illegally downloaded and no one watched the ads or paid for the service? Content goes away, pure and simple.

I’m not being morally superior here, I won’t say I’ve never downloaded anything — I’m just as cheap and lazy as the next guy sometimes. But at least I have the presence of mind to know I’m doing something wrong, and I’m not entitled to something that someone else created and paid for.

Bobman, People illegally downloading a show is a sign that the cost or effort required to watch it legally is too high or cumbersome. I watch NFL games online sometimes because I’m not fucking changing my entire cable system to DirecTV just for the privilege of paying a ridiculous amount of money to watch my teams 10-12 untelevised games each year. That’s a broken system.

It’s a signal that the model is broken and needs to be repaired. The same thing happened in the movie community….now with Redbox, Netflix, PPV, and all the other modes of delivery, cutting the cost of legally viewing a movie to $1 or even less…people aren’t “stealing” the content as much. A lot of times the content they are stealing isn’t even AVAILABLE to them. I remember the makers of The Hurt Locker bitching about illegal downloads at a point when it was incredibly hard to actually FIND the movie without purchasing it. Redbox didn’t carry it. It wasn’t on PPV. That’s a broken system.

I would happily jettison my $170 a month Verizon bills, and only pay $1 an episode for the shows I actually care about watching….but even that isn’t 100% possible at the moment.

Exactly the Nielsen makes me just think, well I pay my cable bill, no one will know if I’m watching. With HBO I’m paying a premium for that. Granted I will watch on HBOGO, but I’ll download it if it is something like blackwater just to get a high quality stream.

Bobman: so I’m stealing if I download Modern Family for my wife and she doesn’t see the commercials. Extending that logic, are you stealing if you leave the room when commercials come on? Change the channel during a break? See the ad for Chevy, but buy Ford? Have I betrayed the show and the network if they’re sponsored by Coke but I only drink sweet, sweet RC Cola?

If our receipt of advertising is so important, where does our duty as an ad recipient begin and end?

It’s not only people being cheap. I largely pay for Hulu and Netflix which gives me tons of content. I don’t pay for cable put the cable company here never turns the line off so it still works. Are there some shows that I have to download if I want to watch? Sure. I don’t mind buying a season pass on iTunes or through Amazon but the prices they charge are far to high that I only do it for my top two shows and a lot of shows are unavailable.

Look at the anime market, a few years back bootlegs and downloads were really big but now we have cheap (or free) access to so much of that content. They have given us a way to watch that they can make money off. I know the networks want to get rid of Hulu and it will likely be gone in a few years but shows that they carry generally don’t show up high on illegal download lists. For the younger generation content needs at our command, not the networks.

Also, we are seeing more scripted TV than ever before right now and way too many quality shows to actually watch. Yes, some shows get canceled that are really great but overall TV is better than ever. Right in the middle of all this torrenting.

“On the other hand, it is illegal, and by not paying for it, you’re doing a disservice to the very shows that you love the most.”

I buy the DVDs of shows I enjoy the most, but I don’t have cable. Isn’t more money going to the people who do the show by me buying the DVDs than from me – me without a Nielsen box – watching it? Seems like I’d be paying a shitload more of my money would be going to Comcast than to the creators of The Venture Bros or Futurama. I’ll download the shows during the seasons and then get the DVDs for the commentaries and other features.

Side note, I’ve always been intrigued by the number of shows I find online that have CityTV stamps on the lower right, especially cartoons. Is there a Canadian group doing a large amount of the ripping?

Cable companies are desperate to keep people sucking at their teat. Hopefully enough people will cut the cord and force them to lower to reasonable prices. They could cut their rates in half and still be overcharging like mofos

Copyright infringement is not theft its infringement. Let’s say I broke into your house and stole your television or your mom, that would be theft since I deprived you of it by taking it for myself. But if i go and see your bike then make an exact copy of it its not theft, its a copy. You still have complete use of the original bike and I have a copy. It is not theft, not everything can be boiled down into simple terms, you are a taking a complex issue and acting like someone stole your milk money.

Not necessarily. Using your example, these people aren’t making another Game of Thrones with their own parts and actors. This is more like if they rented a car for a flat fee and let a bunch of other people use it. The car rental place isn’t getting the fees for all the other people to use it, not to mention the mileage racked up. It isn’t in the rental agreement to charge for the mileage or if other people use it, and that is the problem- they want that mileage and the extra fees for the other people using it, but there isn’t a way for them to control that.

CaptainKirk, not necessarily, YMMV. Take for instance a movie like Taken. Released over seas and available for torrenting for over a year. It gained so much word of mouth and momentum, that it garnered a US theater release, made a bunch of money and a sequel. The piracy of the movie earned it more money.

As is the case with GoT. I know a lot of people that have no desire to subscribe to HBO and have no idea what GoT really is. I let them borrower(!) my DVDs (THEIVES, THEY ARE!) to get them into it and several have bought the DVDs themselves and some even subscribe to HBO just for the season.

Not to mention, studies have shown that those who torrent often spend a very good share on media themselves.

But that is exactly the problem with the whole issue. You sight very good examples, but the industry would also then turn around and say that for every person that then turned around bought the DVD’s or subscribed to HBO, there are dozens more that didn’t. They want THAT money, too. I’m pretty sure the industry would also take issue with you lending your DVD’s to someone else as well. I read an article recently that talked about the way the music industry was trying to claw for every cent it could, even wanting users to pay for every time a song was played that was being used as a ringtone. So if you got a phone call and Beyonce’s Single Ladies was the ringtone, you’d have to pay a fee for that. It is ridiculous, but at the same time, the tv and movie industry will always be able to point out that they are losing money from people not paying for something that they normally should have.

The whole “I buy the shows I like” argument doesn’t work, simply because you don’t buy the ones you watched but didn’t really quite enjoy enough to go out and buy on DVD. Doesn’t mean you didn’t watch them in the first place.

On the other side, back to Otis’ first point “can and should pay for”. Can being the operative word here. People who don’t have cable cannot get HBO, they do not have the option of paying for HBO. They have the option of paying for cable, and then on top of that paying for HBO. But the problem here is a lot of people don’t want cable, but they would like HBO. HBO and several other companies recognize this and probably have some plans to adapt in the future but it isn’t a priority.

I’m not defending downloading, I just want to make sure that the discussion is clear because if it’s not we end up talking about something that isn’t relevant like “durp, why don’t you just get HBO”

That problem is too fold though. For one, it’s not a guaranteed lost sale. Those that didn’t buy it, possibly were NEVER going to pay for it and if they could not torrent it or borrower the shows, they would just not have watched it. The issue is that there is technology nowadays that COULD put the shows in almost every household for a fairly nominal fee, but the industry refuses to cut through their own red tape to make it work. These are the same businesses that continually screw production staff with convoluted accounting practices to hide money so they do not have to pay people. Unfortunately, there is not a lot anyone can do about it as they hold all the power and have little desire to make things easier for anyone.

TomDanks, your reasoning is faulty. The intellectual property belongs to HBO who has the right as its owner to dictate the costs and control the dissemination of its product. You have no more right to it that you do to use my home when I’m on vacation under the guise that you are not taking it from me.

I love copyright math. Its already been proven that the losses they claim are impossible. Sometimes they claim illegal downloads in just one category cost them more money than the population actually spends on entertainment as a whole.

According to the rights holders it is not theft, its infringement, because when they sue you theft isn’t worth their time. They do like to throw around words like ‘theft’ and ‘stealing’ in their anti-piracy propaganda but legally they don’t consider it such.

As someone who lives in germany and normally would have to wait over a year to catch up on new episodes of shows like Mad Men, GoT, Breaking Bad and so on, I can only appreciate the work these guys do. It sucks badly to not be up to date.

I am in no way saying that it’s a good thing. But it makes a lot of people really happy. And after i am done watching the episodes I make sure to buy the seasons on DVD.

When I’m done drinking awesome beer, listening to Kraftwerk and eating all kinds of meat stuffed in a tube I still have some time on my hands.
And that is used to watch American television. I don’t see a problem here :)

I live in Northern Ireland. In theory I should have absolutely no reason to be on this site at all. Nowhere here airs SNL, Community, Workaholics, Kroll Show, Tosh etc, and only on premium satellite channels do other shows like Walking Dead, Archer, Mad Men air months after their original air dates.

I pay the TV License fee here to legally be able to watch terrestrial televison. This week the BBC only just started on season 2 of Parks and Rec.

Because of this when Dustin says something like this: ‘to the detriment…of the very shows we want to support the most’, all I can say argue is I will take any chance I get to live in a world where Happy Endings can be seen every week, and not just the 1st season which one channel keeps putting on repeat because they can’t show re-runs of Friends* anymore.

*Seriously, last year the uk version of Comedy Central bought the rights to show Friends off a terrestrial channel and it caused hella trouble for people. It made mainstream news and everything.

I’d have no problem paying. I never have torrented, but use sites like rapidshare/uploaded etc which cost money to be able to use anyway. I once did try using UK Netflix, but their archives are really limited.

Netflix where I live is not equal to the Netflix in the states so for anyone really who lives in europe and participates in any debate on this site pretty much needs to be a low down dirty pirate. Justified? Happy Endings? Community? Franklin & Bash? Yeah right!
We’ve just gotten HBO here that we can stream so that’s major progress and a step in the right direction – GOT within 24 hours is pretty damn huge!

@Home_Erectus I’m in Australia and I would absolutely pay for the shows I watch if it meant watching them as they’re released. We don’t have Netflix, iTunes withholds the episodes for as long as the DVDs (why I don’t know – why are there region specific downloads?) and our TV stations are ruthless at buying shows like Happy Endings but holding onto them for a year or two before sporadically showing them at different times every week.

I am surprised more foreign TV companies don’t get pissed about American companies not lettings them air programs for months or years. I’m sure a lot of shows lose a huge portion of their overseas audience to people that watch online or buy the DVD.

When I moved to Canada ‘Stargate Atlantis’ had finished its 5th season a year before. The Space channel was promoting ‘all-new’ episodes which were actually the start of the 4th season. I could walk into a store and buy the DVD for season 4 and 5 before season 4 had even started to air. I use this example because I was a fan of the show and bought all the seasons. I never watched a single episode up here because there was no reason to do so.

Shocker, Rowles is against illegal downloading. Also really Rowles, “The Pirates Bay”? You are a writer on a pop culture website and you can’t even get the name right of the most known torrent site in the world?

He ruined Sons Of Anarchy by picking it apart to death and he ruined my simple pleasure enjoyment of laughing at The Walking Dead by sucking it’s balls like it deserves to be in the upper echelon of dramatic television with Breaking Bad and Justified and whatnot.

They’re breaking the law to watch television, which is fine, the game is the game. But they’re still breaking the law because they just have to be the first one at the water cooler to say “AMAHHH-ZING”.

Missing an episode in a series like Justified is a pretty big deal. Dedicated fans like that is what keeps TV shows on the air. But by all means, TV networks should absolutely take a “go fuck yourself” attitude to their customers. Who are you? The tobacco industry?

The legions of brain-dead reality TV viewers and the over 50 crowd make up the majority of the live audiences. Sports are just the common ground were advertisers can always find their desired demographic.

I love how many torrenters/theives act like they have some right to these shows. “I live in X country, how else am I supposed to get it?” doesn’t make it somehow perfectly ok to download these shows without paying for them.

Would you have me believe that if HBO put individual GoT episodes up on their website for $3-4 bucks a pop, torrent theiving would suddenly disappear? Of course not….people are generally cheap, lazy, and entitled.

Totally. Like when people said if they would just put individual songs online for $1-2 per song that people would start buying music again and, in turn, would help independent record labels and artists a better chance to get their music heard. Who did that work out?

Why would we pay for something that we would get for free in a few months(and with a horrible dub) anyway? GoT and HBO shows are of course another deal but regular TV shows…? It makes no sense to pay for them

People do pay 120 bucks a month for cable. I mean that’s 1400 a year on cable, you think the average salary is 30Kish a year, that’s what? Five percent of your yearly salary to TV? I think that buys you a fuck load of entitlement.

DaisyCutter, congratulations, you’re the first person I’ve ever heard argue that people shouldn’t download these shows even when they’re not available in their home country. I always thought that was the magic “stop hassling me about piracy” button. Not for everyone I guess, which I find pretty unbelievable.

PRC, what eventually motivates cable companies to fix their stupid-ass business model, to your mind? Historically, when you have the kind of monopoly power cable companies do, it’s usually the black market.

Finally, everyone really needs to stop calling it stealing. I’m a staunch moral relativist, so I find it pretty impossible to call illegal downloading “wrong” or “right,” but I don’t do any of it myself (though I might in the future; I’m not sure). But to call illegal downloading theft demeans the concept of theft.

When someone steals from you, that thing they took, you don’t have it anymore. The harm that can cause is why thieves are being lynched in a number of poor neighborhoods in Latin America (something, to be clear, that I absolutely do not condone). No one will ever be lynched for illegal downloading. This is true even if you think illegal downloading is morally reprehensible and should carry a jail sentence. It’s still not stealing. That’s semantic confusion.

Finally, as someone else put it elsewhere on the internet today, if you’re more up in arms about TV piracy than HBO execs, you might want to spend some time thinking about why you feel so strongly about this:

It is “theft”, so please learn the definition of theft.
1. You are taking or using someone’s property? Check
2. You are depriving the rightful owner of its use? Check

What’s that? You do not believe you are depriving the owner of its use? Well, what does HBO “use” this intellectual property for? They use it to sell to the public (that is YOU) in the form of subscriptions and dvds, which is compromised by the theft of this property by these torrent services. You then download this property, thereby knowingly receiving stolen property (something that does not belong to you or the torrent site) and therefore meet the definition of a thief.

I really try to avoid personal attacks, but that guy above me? Quim? That guy’s a piece of shit, and the exact type of person I was referring to with my original comment.

It doesn’t matter what kind of half-assed justifications you throw up (I can’t get the show, I’m teaching the horrible evil cable company a lesson, etc) it all boils down to “I want something that I cannot or will not obtain legally, therefore I will take it illegally”. You’re taking something without paying the associated cost, and that’s pretty much the definition of theft.

What irritates me most isn’t the illegal downloading itself, because I’m perfectly willing to admit I’ve broken the law before to benefit myself. It’s that these content pirates somehow think they’re not even doing anything wrong that really pisses me off. Just because you want something doesn’t mean you’re entitled to have it, and have it at your convinience.

I would pay $25 for a season pass to Game of Thrones in HD. The problem is content providers try to treat digital downloads like they have the same value as physical media. Why in the world would I pay the price (sometimes more) as the physical product? I can’t loan it out or sell it when I’m done with it so the value can’t be argued as the same. Content creators would love a system that forced you to pay every time you eyeballs glimpsed their content.

Looks like we really push each other’s button’s! I’m willing to admit I may have come off a little strong there, and that there’s more room for disagreement than I implied. Apologies.

Daisy, I’ll freely acknowledge that illegal/legal is not a primary way that I view right/wrong (though I think it would be foolish to ignore the issue of legality entirely). I also don’t think using illegal drugs is wrong, and I’m not clear how I feel about dealing them (the morality of which would be dictated, for me, by its contribution to the violence associated with black markets rather than its illegality). So, this isn’t just a piracy thing.

Also, I’ll remind you that I don’t pirate (and I’ve done very few illegal drugs in my lifetime), so it’s not that I’m using this to feel better about my actions. It’s a genuine philosophical disagreement. Does that make me a piece of shit? I think there’s probably room for people with differing views on whether or not we should include intellectual property in our definitions of theft in the “not pieces of shit” population. Maybe you disagree, but I’m hoping that maybe I was just a little brash in the way that I made my argument.

PRC, that was a better case for why we should consider illegal downloading of intellectual property theft than I generally encounter, and I’m willing to concede it’s a valid one. But it’s not self-evident or incontestable. Where does your two-part definition come from? Is it a legal definition? Because the definitions I found floating around the internet (from real dictionary sites and everything) don’t mention “using” someone’s property, just taking it.

Still, you obviously have a point. I think usage could be an important part of a definition of theft — the obvious material corollary would be something like joyriding. But that’s still something that the person you took from doesn’t have while you’re using it, which I remain tempted to view as distinct. You of course anticipated this critique, but there’s something about your argument that doesn’t quite sit right with me. If I were to “steal” intellectual property in this way, the only use I would be depriving them of was selling it to *me* (and arguably not even that, for all the people who buy the DVDs later or who would not under any circumstances pay for the thing they are downloading). They’ve still got it to sell to all those other people. The way I tend to think about this, stealing something would compromise their ability to do that.

Maybe this is just semantic, since some people say theft is synonymous with larceny and others such as yourself argue that it applies to depriving a person or corporation of the right to sell their intellectual property to you. Certainly, the use of the word piracy is equally suspect. The difference for me, I guess, is that piracy is a word that has been fully re-appropriated for a new usage, and everyone understands that and understands the new usage of the word. It seems to me that people intent on labeling the practice as theft or stealing are doing something else, trying close off inquiry into what this practice is, how immoral it really is, and how it should it be handled.

I am not trying to get anyone to view illegal downloading as acceptable, or even as more acceptable than swiping someone’s iPhone on the subway. I strongly object, though, to people lumping all these things together as a matter of definition, or trying to delegitimize the distinctions between them. I think that does damage to the concept that I have of theft (though perhaps for you it’s the concept of larceny that I’m referring to), because I think the act of actually taking something from someone has real violence associated with it. People feel violated, maybe even unsafe.

To be clear, I think it’s entirely legitimate to argue that illegal downloading, piracy, IP theft — whatever you want to call it (though even IP theft still carries the wrong connotation for me, something more akin to stealing someone’s idea and patenting or publishing it yourself so that they can’t profit from it at all) — are just as bad as and perhaps sometimes worse than the theft of material goods or cash. (Except in places where the product is not available at all — there I believe people are entirely justified, and I still have trouble understanding the objection beyond total conflation of illegality and immorality).

I don’t think that I agree (that illegal downloading just as bad as theft of material goods or cash, or publishing someone else’s material as your own, thereby profiting from it in a way that denies them the ability to do so at all). But the extent to which I disagree would have to do with matters of degree and other measures of harm more than which *kind* of crime it was. So, I would probably agree some of the time, and I certainly agree that it’s important to support the things you value (which is why I pay for music and books and movies but probably not why I pay for cable or HBO, though I do). I just think treating these two categories of things as inherently synonymous and arguing that there is no other legitimate way to think about it all is an intellectually lazy way to bully people into accepting the status quo.

Quim I hope you read this, you calm demeanour and logical way of viewing piracy is incredible. I especially like your idea of infringement being quite different to theft. I would argue this, what ever your reason for piracy, whether it be not being able to afford it or not wanting to be behind etc. it is not the same as theft. If you stole a car from a dealer, that dealer would not only lose money from you taking the car, but he would not be able to sell it to someone else meaning that he is automatically losing money he clearly is entitled to. But when such a commodity is so overpriced with a staunch refusal to adapt to growing technological changes (see Louis C.K and Aziz Anzari’s success with anti-piracy), then whilst it may not be legal to steal said tv shows, it acst as a sign of protest to the companies who abstain from providing fair prices to their customers. I’m not saying every single person who downloads or streams a show is a champion for the rights of man, but these companies have found a legal way to maximise their profits and are annoyed that they cannot see every single dime that they are owed. I think its ridiculous. I’m not saying, that if the prices were lowered substantially that it would stop. What I am saying is that people who argue that it is against the law and that is it really are naive in how the world works. For decades that have been laws that infringe upon peoples civil rights etc. I’m not saying this is on the same level as that, but if people are unhappy with how they are being treated, why should they just abide by the law. Going back to your drug point, for someone who has also partaken in such illegal activities, I can only say where is the justice? Alcohol and tobacco are legal to use, but weed is not? Technically I am a criminal, but morally I am not so sure. Obviously if you take my argument to the extreme it can be seen as anarchist.

Can we please stop with the fake indignation over this non-issue? I don’t think that anyone who actually makes the effort to think this through – economically, legally, philosophically or historically – or has read a decent book about information economy could take serious offence in tv “piracy”…

Of course, there’s an interesting and stimulating discussion to be had – but not on the level of “you’re not paying for it, therefore you are stealing. It is wrong.” vs. “i don’t care olol”. It’s about tangibility of old media and intangibility of new media. It’s about whether or not tv shows are information. It’s about what constitutes rival, non-rival or anti-rival goods, where exclusive rights come from and what they do to the free market. And it’s arguably about returning to a more natural understanding of media as relational and service goods, instead of applying the forced concept of intellectual property that we have become accustomed to… There’s a lot of issues under the surface, but unless you’re willing to have a serious discussion, stop pretending to be offended by other people copying 1s and 0s. Ugh…

Okay. You have a point there, I wasn’t exactly making a clear argument, because it’s such a complex topic. I’ll try to put it in a few paragraphs: everybody just assumes that copying a tv show is flat-out wrong. Because it is “illegal”. But let’s assume for a minute that copying any digital file does not have to be wrong or illegal (and does not even have to hurt the creative people behind the product, but that’s a different discussion for now). Let’s embark on a little thought experiment:
You have an .avi of Parks & Rec S01E01 on your computer. As you know, all digital files can be expressed in a series of 1s and 0s. If you were sufficiently bored and had enough time on your hands you could basically write down all the 1s and 0s of that episode on a bunch of napkins. Hypothetically, you could learn the correct arrangements of 1s and 0s by heart. The absurdness or unlikeliness of doing something like this should not distract you from the theoretical possibility. If you told the numbers to someone else, you would have broken current federal copyright law. Just by memorizing numbers and telling them to somebody else. In essence, you would have committed thought crime.
What’s worse, if you applied current law to Ray Bradbury’s dystopian future, then what the people were doing at the end of “Fahrenheit 451” (memorizing books) could be regarded as copyright infringement, too.

What this silly thought experiment shows is that anything digital is, effectively and legally, information. Also economically! A digital file is an intangible good and nothing but information. Freedom of information is a basic human right, if we are to believe the univeral declaration of human rights: you would never dare to say that the simple yes-or-no answer to a question could be claimed as a property. You would never dare to punish somebody for sharing a yes-or-no answer with someone else. Still, all the digital files in the iTunes store are nothing but a series of yes-or-no answers (1s and 0s). So, I’d say we have established that digital files are information and as you may realise there is no inherent property in information that prevents it from being shared and distributed all over society. That’s unlike a chair or an apple. Chairs can only be used by one person at a time (that means they’re “rival good”). Apples can be eaten or rot away and disappear (that means they’re “subtractable goods”). Information and digital files do none of these things. Information can be consumed by any number of people at the same time, without depleting it or necessarily reducing its quality. It will not disappear when you give it to somebody else. Similarly, if you say that an MP3 that you recorded is worth 1 Dollar, then copying it a bunch of times into a bunch of folders on your desktop or even onto a couple of USB sticks will not mean that you’re actually accumulating wealth, right? It’s not the same as building dozens of chairs (tangible goods)…

These are only a few of the many economical quirks about information. There is a lot more scientific literature out there that details these things (search Benkler or Steven Weber, for example) And these quirks all lead to this: pretending information-based goods are equal to tangible goods (e.g. chairs and apples) does not work in a market economy. It’s just not the same. So newspaper companies and, after them, entertainment media corporations introduced this idea of handling information like property before the law (copyright laws, intellectual property). But it does not actually solve the problem. It does not change any of those properties of information. All it does, is giving information producers more means of profiting from their goods and other economic/legal advantages over conventional market participants. For society this is arguably both a service and disservice, there’s many pros and cons to this. I could go into much detail here, but I’ll just leave it at that for now. I’m just saying, it’s a more complex discussion than most people realize and I’d love to see more sophisticated debate around this, instead of the usual bullshit. Perhaps it’s not all that simple to decide what’s right and wrong in the realm of “piracy”, if you look at the bigger picture (human rights, enabling free and working markets, enabling innovation and efficiency of information production).

Clever, but not the point I made. I’m saying people pirating TV shows is pretty much collateral damage of a serious economic inefficiency and philosophical problem, that encompasses much more important areas like intellectual property, the information economy as a whole, patenting etc.
It’s a discussion much older than Game of Thrones or Pirate Bay…
Still, I admit that it sounds silly when applied to GoT… :<

@rutgerhauer: calling it collateral damage just because you do it or condone it, doesn’t make it so.
And saying that anything digital is simply breaking information down to Yes or No answers makes it information is a ridiculous argument. It’s entertainment. No different than having to pay to go see a play, or a comedian. If you want to enjoy it, pay to see it.
Is digital media broken down to 1s and 0s? Yes. Is that why it is pirated? No. You’re not talking about copying 1s and 0s, you’re talking about copying characters that were created, a script written, sets constructed, actors studied scripts, etc. with the expectation that their final product would be sold (to a studio, a cable subscriber, or a broadcast network and their subscribers) and that those that created it would be paid for their work.
This is not a case of freedom of speech. It is their voice that went into it (not yours or anyone else that is giving away something which someone else created and sold) and to that end, they have copyrighted the work so it cannot be protected.
You’re like the guy that put a dime in the old newspaper box and then took all the copies out of the box and sold them (or just gave them away). Just because you get away with it doesn’t make it right. You are still denying them being paid for something they created, and which they only have the right to distribute as they desire.
You like a show because of the way it’s written, or how an actor seems to be the perfect guy to play the part of your favorite character, and then you claim it’s okay to copy it and reproduce it because it’s just 1s and 0s? None of their craft or individuality factors into it. It’s right because you think it’s so, laws be damned?

@rutger, i did read your epic post and believe that i understood most of what you have to say. the only point i would like to make is regardless type of good it is, the original producer of said good needs to profitable for the good to be made in the first place. if for some crazy reason no one bought or needed any more apples, apples would stop being made, the farmers would grow something else that made them money. so unless HBO can make money off of making GoT (taking the books information and making their own) then there is no reason for them to make the episodes in the first place. and since were a greedy society, HBO wants to make as much as they possible can or at least they should. in order to do that they need to control all of their information that is seen by millions of ppl.

plus, if all these millions of ppl who watch the show for “free,” would pay HBO in some fashion to watch the show, they may be inclined to up their production budget in coming seasons

I live in the UK and came across online streaming on sites like Loombo and Videxden a few years ago. I then moved on when Loombo disappeared to using the likes of Putlocker and Vidbux and was content with that as my primary source of watching US TV shows that wouldn’t air here in the UK for months or years.

There is no way I could come to sites like this or read Alan Sepinwall’s blog or even have a tumblr with the blogs I follow today if I didn’t keep up via streaming and downloading from sites like rapidshare and megaupload. If I like a show, and I watch it regularly then I almost always buy the DVD sets when they come out years later so I don’t consider my ‘illegal’ downloading to be stealing simply because I do eventually pay for almost all of it.

I torrent everything while in school, and then, when working, I’ll get the blu-rays or dvds of the shows I like the most. I do the same thing with music. If you do good work, you should get paid for it so you’ll do more good work. There are some shows I’ve torrented though, that I’d never ever buy.

They deliver DRM free files, so you can do with them whatever you want, like putting them on your DLNA server. So much better service, even better then ripping buyed Blue Rays/DVDs. So yeah, until HBO et.al. have something like that, I’m also free of guilt.

Do you have some sort of personal stake in illegal downloading? Is money personally being removed from your account by it? I find your obsession and rage over this distressing and frankly a little uncomfortable. Fuck, people who actually have their work pirated en mass don’t care nearly as much as you do. Calm the fuck down, you psycho.

You steal.
You have no guilt about it.
You are defensive when confronted by it. (I criticized your ACT of piracy and You responded with a personal attack on me).
You rationalize your behavior and seek or expect approval from strangers.
I do not have a personal stake in this issue. But you do. That is the difference here. You are unable or unwilling to look at this issue beyond what personally suits your needs or how your actions could impact others.
If we are going to make flippant psychiatric diagnosis, I suppose you are a sociopath. And since you took the time to look up other posts I have made and insult me in those other posts, you seem to have a comorbid personality disorder.
My “obsession and rage” does not appear to rise to the level of your fervent defense and celebration of theft. And you seem genuinely angry that you are not receiving the unmitigated support for your theft from me or others. Strange, that for someone who has “absolutely no guilt” about your actions, you are so easily perturbed by my response.

Excuse me? Where do i seek or expect approval from strangers? from simply posting a comment on the internet?

and you clearly have a personal stake in this issue because if you gain some self awareness and read through the comments of this post you will notice that you are the most fired up and angry out of everyone here.

and i didn’t look up other posts of yours. you see, we both post and read uproxx so we’re going to naturally end up in many of the same posts. it was just coincidence.

anyone can see that you are the opposite of calm and composed right now. relax, buddy. it will all be alright.

For one, this is the PROGRAMMING president. He is more concerned with receiving validation for the shows continued existence and popularity, and is not as much concerned with the financial issues. His bosses — the Chairman, the CEO, the President and COO, the Board Members, along with the distribution and finance departments are the ones that care more about the piracy issue.

Too, if we are going to discuss in earnest what he really said, then lets get a better context.

“In fact, one of Lombardo’s issues with piracy is a creative one. The executive expressed concern that illegal copies can be of poor quality when the Thrones team takes pride in lavishly producing the show. “One of my worries is about the copies [downloaders are] seeing,” Lombardo said. “The production values of this show are so incredible. So I’m hoping that in the purloined different generation of cuts that the show is holding up.”

Still, Lombardo noted that HBO’s policy remains firmly anti-piracy — “We obviously are a subscription service so as a general proposition so we try to stop piracy when we see it happen, particularly on a systematic basis when people are selling pirated versions,” he said. But he also added, perhaps referring to casual individual-user downloading, “No, we haven’t sent out the Game of Thrones police.”

The president of HBO was being quite savvy in this response. Those who defend there intellectual property do so on two grounds: Artistic grounds and financial grounds. They know some people wont give a fuck about stealing from a rich corporation, so they appeal to artistic sensibilities. He is also slyly connecting illegal downloading to poor quality, and by insinuation, reflecting that increased downloading will result in a reduction in the production.

So the first issue is really control of how the property is displayed and disseminated. For example, my guess (yes, its just a guess) is there is some overlap between people who illegally download and those who supported bands who told Glee and American Idol to fuck off because they didn’t want their music associated with those shows.

The second issue is of course the financial issue. Which he did address from HBO’s perspective, which in itself does not necessarily reflect the thoughts of others connected to the show.

I was curious as to whether piracy would be addressed in some fashion today after this block quote;
but HBO programming president Michael Lombardo told Entertainment Weekly recently that the network sees the piracy of “Game of Thrones” as a sign of success more than a problem.
“I probably shouldn’t be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts,” Lombardo said ahead of the season 3 premier. “The demand is there. And it certainly didn’t negatively impact the DVD sales. [Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network.”

In the article he goes on to talk about his biggest concern isn’t that his shows are being pirated but that he is worried about the quality of the rip as he does not want to do disservice to the creators who put in so much hard work to make GoT so beautiful.
All I could think of was how much work probably goes in to ripping and posting shows online as lack of quality is rarely an issue. Someone needs to send HBO prez this article.

And also, I pay over $200 a month for cable and internet because I have every channel except for the a la carte stuff. As well as a Netflix subscription and Hulu Plus. Trust me, the cable company and networks are still getting our money. Or at least the generation before us’s.

Mr. Lombardo clearly speaks for all people involved in the show who rely on payments from HBO which relies on subscription fees from viewers, and that is why HBO is no longer charging for its channels and all its actors and producers have agreed to work for free.

I also pay over 200 bucks a month, I feel you. About a month ago, my DVR sicked up and missed one episode each of about 6 of my favorite shows. Those shows, like Modern Family, Workaholics, Being Human, and Parks and Rec, are in most cases not shown again. So I had episodes piling up on my DVR, and I could either let them sit there unwatched because I’d missed an episode in between, or torrent the missing episodes that I pay to watch every week. I did the latter.

Lombardo acknowledges that he probably shouldn’t be saying it. And I’m sure the stockholders of HBO would disagree with him. HBO has a couple of weekends a year where they give the service away to cable viewers who don’t already have it, I’m sure they would rather get word of mouth /buzz that way than by having people give away all of their shows all the time.

Yeah so I don’t like illegal downloading either, but the guys that are anti-piracy have the WORST arguments. Particularly in television.

If you have cable, you’re paying 120 bucks a month…that’s 1400 bucks a year on fucking television. So now HBO and Shotime are saying that isn’t enough? FX is saying “Well if you miss Justified on Tuesday…LOLs sorry bro ur fucked. BUY IT ON AMAZON OR WAIT FOR THE DVDs!!!”

Fuck that shit. Attitudes like that make me root for these studios to fail. I mean if you’re paying full price for cable, there has to be a LOT more shit included. At least HBO is using their HBOgo service to give subscribers their money’s worth. But I’m guessing a lot of people that pirate TV shows actually end up watching the show live and keeping up with it eventually. HBO, Shotime, notwithstanding. The TV industry needs to change, online distribution is part of it. Quite frankly, Hulu is great…it lets folks watch TV on their schedule. However, for Network TV what about the local affiliates? It’s the local affiliates that killed Conan, they needed to sell ad space in that slot and Conan wasn’t getting the ratings to deliver. FX? Please. Your target demographic is EXACTLY the demographic that watches TV on the internet. Why aren’t you streaming at least in season? I get past seasons make them buy the DVDs, but in season? Please.

The record industry is probably the worst. I actively root for the death of record labels. I mean recording costs have been slashed yet I’m still paying the same price for CDs that I spent seven years ago. Everything that gets on commercial radio is on there because some jerk off at a record label paid for it to be on there. They expect me to pay the same price for digital music (which is a third of the quality) as I pay for a CD. Ugh. Consume feces and expire record industry.

Don’t get me wrong, though. The people that make these products happen should get paid. Artists should get paid, but at least in the music industry buying music isn’t the way to make sure that happens. Yeah, running cables and running a cable service is a bitch. Comcast and DirecTV should get paid. The folks that work at the networks have to make some tough decisions and have to answer to some powerful interets…they should get paid too. The people who work on these TV shows from the writers, to the actors, to the staff deserve to get paid. How much is the question, though. What should we have to pay? What should be included with what we pay? I think that’s the question.

And if I stop caring about who Raylan Givens shoots this week Justified will get cancelled, would that be better? So get off your fucking high horse. What? A digital stream with commercials is too much to fucking ask for? Okay scrooge.

Networks both broadcast and cable need to figure out a way to include streaming. Most people would be willing to watch commercials, something they don’t have to do on DVR, if the show was free, easy to access, and in high quality. Hell, if they streamed shows like BB, Justified, The Americans, SAMCRO online in HD for free I’d probably watch FULL commercials. Something I’d never do on DVR. Apparently, people like watching TV on their laptops more than on their TVs. The networks need to find a way to account for this. Part of a market economy is delivering goods to customers, if the networks can’t…well they need to change to the market. Around 2005 people stopped listening to Nu-Metal (thank god) so record labels stopped signing those bands. Networks need to figure out a way to get their products to the customers.

Haven’t downloaded anything in a while because I already have enough t.v. to occupy my time, but several years ago my argument was: “You don’t expect me to go and buy something like Flight of the Phoenix, do you?”

i’d download the cheesy movies that I had the faintest of interest in watching, but was never willing to actually spend the money on. In rare scenarios when the movie/show was that good, I would buy the blue ray for the extra shit.

How about the 8 day delays some networks put on being able to stream a show from their site? It ensures that you are never able to catch up on a show if you missed/didn’t DVR an episode because you couldn’t watch the latest episode until the next episode had already come out.

I think just about everyone has a valid opinion on the subject of streaming shows that you *shouldn’t* be able to. Yes, if there was a legal, affordable way for many of us to watch just the shows we want to see, we would pay for them happily.

Yes, sometimes you don’t want to pay for something you haven’t had a chance to try out yet, want to make sure you want to drop your hard earned coins on something. (see the video game industry trying to ruin rentals/used games).

At the same time, the people who are creating the shows, the companies who are paying them to create the shows and then broadcast on their networks want you to pay a fee for seeing them. They have every right to limit your access, since at the end of the day, they’re the ones paying for it (you can argue that having satellite/premium cable/etc means YOU’RE paying for it, but just let that go for now).

I don’t believe there are too many folks who haven’t downloaded or streamed something illegally at some point in their lives. It’s too tempting to see what you can get away with. But, if you enjoy a show/artist/etc, you should be making an effort to insure they’re being compensated for their hard work that you enjoy. To me, it’s like running a restaurant. You love eating my food, but you don’t want to pay me? You’re going to go hungry real soon.

It’s just a shame that too many people in this generation don’t see theft as theft, regardless of the reasoning behind it. It’s theft. Sure, the system sucks and needs changed, but being a common criminal isn’t the way to affect that change.

Great, this post has attracted the MPAAs paid shills that taint every post on Torrent Freak. Don’t argue with these people, they are paid to do this. Invalidate a point of theirs, they’ll move the goal posts. Save your time.

I am willing to pay exactly $0 for television. So if I really can’t get it for free, I’m not interested. I will sit through ads, if advertisers are dumb enough to pay for them. I will not pay attention, or buy the products.

Honestly, I don’t care if artists all have to get a day job, and only make art for free as a hobby. I would rather have that than pay. So I will take advantage of the ability to get content with high production values as long as I can, and it will not bother me when it’s gone.

I find the issue for me resolves itself on a simple belief. that a number in and of itself cannot be copyrighted as numbers far predate copyright law. Files are merely an abstraction of a binary number and as such should not be copyrightable either. I do quite agree with many posters that if everyone pirated content would cease to be produced to a huge extent. But what is inherently illegal about that. It just means that technology has rendered the business model of creating television shows so as to gain money either from subscriptions, payments or advertisements untenable. Business models fail all the time.